Don Donovan: Seduction of weeping virgins quite common really

The latest tearful statuette of the Virgin Mary reported from Perth, Western Australia, will seduce the suggestible world as madly as the weeping Madonna of a "miracle city" on the western coast of Italy known as Civitavecchia, to which I have made a personal pilgrimage.

In February 1995 in that undistinguished seaport 90km north of Rome, where tourists used to pause only long enough to catch the ferries that regularly leave for Sardinia, a statue of the Virgin Mary was first reported to have wept blood.

It was greeted by the world press as highly noteworthy, and by the the mayor and local business-bodies of Civitavecchia as a hook upon which they might hang a renaissance of the city of which 21 per cent was unemployed.

They thought it might rival Lourdes, and quite early it was reported that pay-and-display carparks and more accommodation were being planned, along with icecream and souvenir stalls, to cater for the expected religious lust of pilgrims to spend money.

The statue originated from Medjugorge in Herzegovina, part of Yugoslavia. Its owner, an electricity worker named Fabio Gregori, kept the madonna in his front garden where its "red tears" were first observed by his five-year old daughter Jessica.

Thereafter pilgrims jammed the Civitavecchia highway until the local bishop, Monsignor Girolamo Grillo, warned that a little scientific examination might not go amiss. A sensible idea, for it was one of at least a dozen iconic weepings reported in the past 10 years, and examinations of such "miracles" by the Madonna detectives had revealed scams such as that perpetrated by a Florentine company manufacturing small valves capable of insertion behind a statue's eyes and remotely controlled.

Some credence attached to the Madonna by the findings of doctors at Gemelli Hospital (where the Pope goes for medical and surgical treatment) who declared the liquid to be blood. Further support came from the bishop who announced, in an interview on national television, that he was a believer: "I had just finished Mass; I, my sister and two Romanian nuns were having a little pray when the statue began to weep again. My sister actually touched the bloody tears."

On Good Friday of 1995, the Madonna was placed in a chapel for safekeeping. Meanwhile the local police expressed horror at the prospect of thousands of visitors invading their town (where the council had set up its temporary parking areas and loos and for which planners were designing a 1000-seat "sanctuary" and a permanent parking building). Under some pressure magistrates intervened to order the police to seize the statue for more tests. Dark suggestions were made that scientists might compare the blood from the Madonna with Fabio Gregori's.

Incensed, the bishop next announced that he'd go to court if necessary to get the statue back; in this he was supported by the communist mayor on the principle that "most Civitavecchians believe".

Then a judge ordered DNA and other tests to be performed on members of the Gregori family, which squashed a planned Good Friday parade which would have seen the Madonna carried in a bulletproof glass container to be lodged in a specially built chapel in the Church of San Agostino.

Thereafter news petered out until, in July 1995, a Professor Luigi Garlaschelli of the University of Pavia opined that a hollow statue of porous alabaster, such as the Civitavecchia Madonna, fired with a glazed outer skin, filled with human blood and sealed could, if scratched with a very sharp object, weep. Mr Gregori steadfastly refused to have his blood tested.

It was thus with some curiosity that my wife and I recently drove along the straight and obviously new road that leads from the main highway to the Church of San Agostino. We arrived at the same time as the first of the tourist coaches and looked for the weeping Madonna.

She does not yet have a specially built chapel; she is housed in the east end of the south aisle of the church. A small white figurine, she stands in a stone Disneyland grotto encased in thick glass. Her case is surrounded by tracts, posters, leaflets, books, statuettes, plastic flowers and photographs, mostly grainy over-enlargements showing copious trails of what looks like tomato ketchup flowing down her face.

Recorded music plays from a looped tape which repeats itself indecently often. The Madonna looks like a cheap memento such as would have graced a thousand Victorian mantelpieces.

I watched the faces of the pilgrims who shuffled past. Many had come a long way - indeed, I had come from half a world away. Some, mainly old people, had tears in their eyes; most gazed blankly, their mission accomplished, their expectations flattened; some sniffed cynically.

I sneaked a photograph while eyeing a "guard" who made to approach me, then looked away, bored. Meanwhile the sweet-faced little plaster statue stood innocently inside her glass prison.

Outside in the brilliant sunshine the "miracle industry" was getting ready for a new day. More coaches were arriving to fill the enormous carpark while stall vendors were laying out their souvenirs - Madonna paperweights, Madonna ashtrays, Madonna pencil sharpeners.

I picked up a 5000 lire (about $5) statuette and asked the woman: "Marmi?"

"Si, si, Marmi," she replied earnestly.

I made a groove in the "marble" with my thumbnail but no tears flowed.

* Don Donovan's book Country Churches of New Zealand will be published in November.